Freedom from Fear The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945

by Kennedy, David M.

• ISBN13: 9780195144031
• ISBN10: 0195144031
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-04-19
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Between 1929 and 1945, two great travails were visited upon the Americanpeople: the Great Depression and World War II. This book tells the story of howAmericans endured, and eventually prevailed, in the face of those unprecedentedcalamities.The Depression was both a disaster and an opportunity. As David Kennedyvividly demonstrates, the economic crisis of the 1930s was far more than asimple reaction to the alleged excesses of the 1920s. For more than a centurybefore 1929, America's unbridled industrial revolution had gyrated throughrepeated boom and bust cycles, wastefully consuming capital and inflictinguntold misery on city and countryside alike.Freedom From Fear explores how the nation agonized over its role in WorldWar II, how it fought the war, why the United States won, and why theconsequences of victory were sometimes sweet, sometimes ironic. In a compellingnarrative, Kennedy analyzes the determinants of American strategy, the painfulchoices faced by commanders and statesmen, and the agonies inflicted on themillions of ordinary Americans who were compelled to swallow their fears andface battle as best they could.Both comprehensive and colorful, this account of the most convulsive periodin American history, excepting only the Civil War, reveals a period that formedthe crucible in which modern America was formed.The Oxford History of the United StatesThe Atlantic Monthly has praised The Oxford History of the United States as"the most distinguished series in American historical scholarship," a seriesthat "synthesizes a generation's worth of historical inquiry and knowledge intoone literally state-of-the-art book. Who touches these books touches aprofession."Conceived under the general editorship of one of the leading Americanhistorians of our time, C. Vann Woodward, The Oxford History of the UnitedStates blends social, political, economic, cultural, diplomatic, and militaryhistory into coherent and vividly written narrative. Previous volumes are RobertMiddlekauff's The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution; James M. McPherson'sBattle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (which won a Pulitzer Prize and was aNew York Times Best Seller); and James T. Patterson's Grand Expectations: TheUnited States 1945-1974 (which won a Bancroft Prize).

Author Biography

David M. Kennedy is Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History at Stanford University. He is the author of Over Here: The First World War and American Society, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger, which won a Bancroft Prize. He lives in Stanford, California.

Table of Contents

Maps	ix
Acknowledgments	xi
Editor's Introduction	xiii
Abbreviated Titles Used in Citations	xvii
Prologue: November 11, 1918	1	(9)
The American People on the Eve of the Great Depression	10	(33)
Panic	43	(27)
The Ordeal of Herbert Hoover	70	(34)
Interregnum	104	(27)
The Hundred Days	131	(29)
The Ordeal of the American People	160	(30)
Chasing the Phantom of Recovery	190	(28)
The Rumble of Discontent	218	(31)
A Season for Reform	249	(39)
Strike!	288	(35)
The Ordeal of Franklin Roosevelt	323	(40)
What the New Deal Did	363	(18)
The Gathering Storm	381	(45)
The Agony of Neutrality	426	(39)
To the Brink	465	(51)
War in the Pacific	516	(49)
Unready Ally, Uneasy Alliance	565	(50)
The War of Machines	615	(54)
The Struggle for a Second Front	669	(40)
The Battle for Northwest Europe	709	(37)
The Cauldron of the Home Front	746	(52)
Endgame	798	(54)
Epilogue: The World the War Made	852	(7)
Bibliographical Essay	859	(18)
Index	877